During the '60s, I guess I was a baby factory. My three children were born in '62, '66 and '69. My focus was on them, my upwardly mobile husband, work and finishing my B. A. degree.
You talk about segregated schools! I grew up in a segregated community. Lest you don't get this concept, let me explain. I attended school and church, never realizing there was a black/white issue in the world. Why would I? My parents, who taught me to be nice and polite to all individuals, didn't seem to know, themselves, how serious an issue it was. Not until the incident, anyway. My grandparents and uncle attended the local Methodist Church. My Uncle's committee arranged for a guest evangelist to speak. Nobody took note that the church hierarchy had assigned an African American to the task. We finally noticed when the local motel refused to let him have a room. Hard to realize in this day and age, but no negro people were allowed in my hometown after sunset. A room was found for him in the next town north. Everything, but the scar on my soul, went on happily ever after. Well, no doubt the minister's soul was scarred worse.
My next barely escaped learning experience was the summer after my high school graduation. A friend from elementary school invited me south -- to Paducah, KY -- to spend the weekend with his family. I boarded the bus. Being a back of the room kind of person, I headed toward the back of the bus. There were three individuals leaning into the aisle. All were white. Two men, one woman. One was a soldier way too happy to see a girl my age. My usual avoidance mechanism set in, just in time, so that I dropped into the only empty seat in front of them. I sat beside a young black male who did not leave the bus in Paducah. He was headed straight for the south, seated in the front of the bus and I was so segregated that I didn't even know the issue. It was 1956.
From 1963-1965 my husband and I lived in Bloomington, IN. He was a doctoral student and I a secretary at Indiana University.
Three of us girls ate lunch and played cards together at work. I remember being hurt when the African American said to me, in an accusatory tone, that the other white one and I were "so tight". I didn't feel any tighter with one than I did with the other. I still didn't get it.
Just before the ex's graduation, he began job hunting at various universities. We left Indiana during the "worst snow storm in fifty years" and were greeted by daffodils at the Florida state line. The job interviews did not turn out to the ex's liking, so we were in a real hurry to pick up our daughter from the grandparent's home and get back to the land of snow and ice. We decided to take turns driving through the night.
Outside Selma, AL, a place that had been much in the news, my pea sized bladder set up an attack. We drove for miles and miles looking for a filling station or shopping area. Somewhere in the moonless wilderness, we finally came upon a small light. As we pulled in, I noticed a negro man standing in the shadows. A white man approached a screened-in restaurant. The negro man softly called to him. I saw the white man nod and take money from the black man before approaching the restaurant to place an order for both of them. I still didn't get it.
I was directed by signs toward ye olde country outhouses. I was dumbstruck when I stood before three of them. They were labeled "His", "Hers" and "Theirs". I finally got it. No further instructions needed, Lord. From my sheltered, protected, segregated world, it had been hard to understand what the fuss was all about. The memory still causes knots in my stomach.
We got the heck out of Selma at once.
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